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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Sorry to disappear like that for more than a year. It wasn't the most pleasant period in my life, and I was in absolutely no shape to maintain development, not to mention I didn't have any internet connection (among other things), so dropping by and informing everyone on how's it going was pretty much impossible.

I'll divide this post into three sections, addressing the main topics you might be wondering about, and I'll try to make it as brief as possible.

The Past

Photo courtesy of Martin Vlach

Sorry to bring the big guns straight up, but the clock isn't currently on my side, so I don't have the time to compose this post any better. I hope you're into drama.

A while after I released Pendulum (about a year ago), I basically went apeshit after walking in on my fiancee doing my housemate (a pretty close childhood friend of mine), after having an already surreal stretch of one disaster after another in short timespan. I think I'll spare you more details. In consequence, all of it led to me finally having a complete mental breakdown. I stopped all development and quit my day job shortly after.

Collecting bottles and stealing wasn't going too well, even though it kept me going whenever I was hungry and whatnot (I learned pretty quick that I completely suck at begging), so with the last shred of hope I started looking for any kind of work. Then, during summer, I finally managed to land a job working in a warehouse. Turns out that even small shitty companies take dress-code violations and sleeping near the workplace pretty seriously, so that didn't last for long, though.

On the bright side, I met a guy there, one which I soon became friends with. It turned out he likes sketching--it's a fact that brought back memories of the time when I myself was actually happy doing something creative and being relatively successful at it. At that point I decided to try and leave the past behind me, pull my shit together, and give game development another go.

The guy's name is Greg, he's an awesome person, a good friend, and an all-around cuddly guy. Go ahead and check out a bunch of his stuff here.

The Present

Meet Henry

And so four months have passed since then. My housing situation hasn't changed much, apparently nobody wants to give a job to an unreliable hobo, and it's getting unbearably cold outside. One good thing that came out of that period is the fact that Greg and his mom allow me to come by once in a while to send out resumes and work a bit on a project we've been kicking around.

Here's the fun part--with Greg's finances being pretty shabby and his terminally ill mother awaiting costly treatment, they won't be able to help me anymore beyond january. I'm getting more and more certain this will be the year engraved on my gravestone. With that in mind, and my inability to get any consistent income, I have to do something with the only thing I have--this project, in its current state.

"Henry's Rules and Regulations" is an upcoming post-apocalypse comedy action game. Your goals are awesome zombie killing sprees you'll brag about to your grand children, superhuman survival feats fighting against zombie bears and whatnot, and hats (hats are always the one true goal). On top of that, you get a stage-specific leaderboards system--besting the unworthy of saving the princess in world 1-1 with a top time was never this intense!

All marketing aside, though, it's still in alpha. The core mechanics, art style, enemies, achievements, leaderboards, unlockables, a few concept levels, a handful of weapons, like twenty playable characters, and at least some replay value are already there and fully functional, but it's still far from the scale we'd like to achieve.

Just for now (so that the alpha already resembles some kind of game) I shaped the stages as a series of last stands, where you have to defeat a certain amount of enemies under the given time limit, and get rewarded based on how fast you do it. This will of course change in the future, where the stages will turn into full-blown campaigns, much to the vein of eg. left 4 dead.

Disregard the pseudo menu, placeholder music, and the lack of like all the sounds--remember, this is just an alpha. The character/weapon select message boxes also act as the shops for the respective goods--once you unlock something, you can then buy it in the shop for free use. Make sure to let me know of any glitches you might encounter.

Also, note that this doesn't--and will not--contain any hentai content. It's intended for a much broader audience, and we'll try to do our best and give the steam platform a shot. I'm posting this here because currently I have no other place to do so and I want to grab as much attention as I possibly can.

The Future

This should be a question mark

The future is uncertain, that's for sure--even more so, given my current situation. Everything I've typed in this post is basically my final effort to change my seemingly inevitable fate, so in that spirit, I'll do three things.

First of all, I'll cut the price for Pendulum down to 28,57142857142857% of its original price! Err, I mean it's now down to just a buck. If you like the challenge and you haven't tried the game out yet, now is the time.

Secondly, for the time being, I'll allow donations. I've set up a button for it at the top of the right-hand column of this blog, you should be able to spot it right away if you scroll all the way up. I'm already deep down shit creek, and I ate the paddle, so every amount helps.

In exchange you'll get early access to the games I create this and next year, a free copy of each of those games once they're ready to be distributed, and you'll get credited in each one in their respective credits roll as a contributor. The games in question are: Henry, an unannounced hentai game I should be able to finish before april, that still unnamed hentai game I announced and showed concept art for last year, and anything I haven't planned yet but might end up creating.

If time allows, I could throw in a few hours of programming, spriting, or sound design. Note that I will only be able to provide said goods if I, with your support, actually manage to pull this off and, well, won't die.

Lastly, if you don't mind helping a fellow out--spreading the word around would help a ton. I'm in desperate need of money, a hug, and maybe appropriate advice. The more people know about my situation, the higher the chance for me to actually overcome the hardships of getting eaten by wolves, and make some awesome games during the process.